Idea to Improve Passenger Transportation as a More Developed Gameplay Loop

[Aegis 1 Razor]

One of the issues I've run into with passenger missions is how few people want to be transported. It doesn't really make sense that only a handful of people want to be transported from one massive system like Sol to another such as Tau Ceti. However, limited mission availability is understandable due to server limitations that Frontier has. The solution would not only give more depth to passenger transport, but also could possibly reduce server load for Frontier.

The idea here is to treat bulk passengers almost like commodities (VIP missions would remain unchanged). Under this proposed system, when you click on the Group Transportation tab in station services, you will be greeted by the galaxy map in which you will click on a system and destination station that you wish to ferry passengers to. Given much of this system and station selection is already in-game for Apex Interstellar, this would likely not be too difficult to implement. Once you have chosen a station, the number of passengers of each cabin class that wish to travel to that station will be calculated based on the source and destination system's faction states and population. You can then fill up your passenger vessel with the exact number of passengers you want and pick another station if you want to go to multiple destinations. Payment upon delivery would be based on distance from the source station, number of passengers, and class of passengers transported. Like selling commodities, transporting passengers would benefit the owner of the destination starport.

In short, I believe that this system would give more reason to transport passengers, both for profit and BGS, while also requiring the player to put in more effort to find stations with good demand for passenger travel.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

One of the issues I've run into with passenger missions is how few people want to be transported. It doesn't really make sense that only a handful of people want to be transported from one massive system like Sol to another such as Tau Ceti. However, limited mission availability is understandable due to server limitations that Frontier has. The solution would not only give more depth to passenger transport, but also could possibly reduce server load for Frontier.

The idea here is to treat bulk passengers almost like commodities (VIP missions would remain unchanged). Under this proposed system, when you click on the Group Transportation tab in station services, you will be greeted by the galaxy map in which you will click on a system and destination station that you wish to ferry passengers to. Given much of this system and station selection is already in-game for Apex Interstellar, this would likely not be too difficult to implement. Once you have chosen a station, the number of passengers of each cabin class that wish to travel to that station will be calculated based on the source and destination system's faction states and population. You can then fill up your passenger vessel with the exact number of passengers you want and pick another station if you want to go to multiple destinations. Payment upon delivery would be based on distance from the source station, number of passengers, and class of passengers transported. Like selling commodities, transporting passengers would benefit the owner of the destination starport.

In short, I believe that this system would give more reason to transport passengers, both for profit and BGS, while also requiring the player to put in more effort to find stations with good demand for passenger travel.

Yeah, that's pretty much what we thought we were gonna get when FDev announced passengers. Unfortunately, we got cargo that sometimes wants a ton of washing machines